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aggravate

/ˈæɡ.ɹə.veɪ̯t/verb

aggravate is spelled A-G-G-R-A-V-A-T-E. The wrong spelling people search most is aggrevate: about 90 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Aggravate is a verb meaning “To make (an offence) worse or more severe; to increase in offensiveness or heinousness”.

How many letters and syllables are in aggravate?

Letters9: A-G-G-R-A-V-A-T-E
Syllables3 (from its American pronunciation)
In writingabout once in every 2 million words; the 36,998th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched2; the most searched, aggrevate, about 90 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).

How do you spell aggravate?

Aggravate is spelled A-G-G-R-A-V-A-T-E. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for aggravate in either form.

aggravatethe right spelling420 searches a month
aggrevatee in place of a90 searches a month
agravatea missing g30 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is aggravate?

Aggravate appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 36,998th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce aggravate?

  • /ˈæɡ.ɹə.veɪ̯t/

As an adjective (“Aggravated”): /ˈæɡɹəvət/.

Aggravate has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Mélange_a_trois-aggravate.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of aggravate

  • aggravates present, singular, he/she/it
  • aggravating participle, present
  • aggravated participle, past
  • more aggravate comparative
  • most aggravate superlative

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does aggravate mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

verb

  1. 1

    To make (an offence) worse or more severe; to increase in offensiveness or heinousness.

  2. 2

    To make (any bad thing) worse.

  3. 3

    archaicTo give extra weight or intensity to; to exaggerate, to magnify.

    He aggravated the story.

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo pile or heap (something heavy or onerous) on or upon someone.

  5. 5

    colloquialproscribedTo exasperate; to provoke or irritate.

adjective

  1. 1

    obsoleteAggravated.

  2. 2

    obsoleteLoaded, burdened, weighed down.

  3. 3

    obsoleteHeightened, intensified.

  4. 4

    obsoleteUnder ecclesiastical censure, excommunicated.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Aggravate in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchaggraver (To make worse, or more severe)
Germanverschlimmern, erschweren (To make worse, or more severe), ärgern, verbittern (To exasperate; to provoke; to irritate)
Portugueseagravar (To make worse, or more severe), abusar, provocar (To exasperate; to provoke; to irritate)
Spanishagravar, empeorar (To make worse, or more severe), irritar, exasperar, sublevar (To exasperate; to provoke; to irritate)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does aggravate come from?

The adjective is first attested in 1471 in Middle English, the verb in 1530; from Latin aggravātus, perfect passive participle of aggravō (“to add to the weight of, make worse, oppress, annoy”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from ad- (“to”) + gravō (“to make heavy”), from gravis (“heavy”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). See grave and compare aggrieve and aggrege. Participial usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English. By surface analysis, ag- + grave (“heavy”) + -ate (“verb suffix”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after aggravate